


all the better to eat you with

by eldritchbee



Series: the sansa collection [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Pedophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: Alayne Stone needs to win Harrold Hardyng over, or so her father says.All the warning tags primarily for Petyr Baelish Existing.





	all the better to eat you with

**Author's Note:**

> Also involves a long, drawn out metaphor involving animal violence and death, thanks Petyr. Crossposted on Tumblr obviously, I wrote this probably in 2014 but only posted it after GRRM came out with the most recent TWW Sansa chapter bc it fit my headcanon decently enough? Anyway.

He has a boy’s dreams, more like a songbird than a falcon. His hair smells like summer grass and his mouth tastes like summer fruits when she first lets him kiss her.

His dreams are a boy’s dreams like Sansa Stark’s dreams were a girl’s dreams.

Sansa Stark, she thinks, would have liked the smell of his hair, the taste of his mouth. Had she met him in Winterfell instead of Joffrey, Sansa Stark might still be alive. Her dream might have persisted, a haze covering Harry’s faults and clearing only on the gentleness with which he spoke and kissed.

But Sansa Stark died a long time ago. Joffrey had gotten there first, with a monster’s dreams, and left her broken. Flung from her castle with few breaths left and eyes only for the sky and snow. The knights stomped on her body as they passed, the queen walked up the steps wiping bits of Sansa Stark off her shoe. Littlefinger had come along at last and loosed the arrow that put the poor girl out of her misery. Her ashes bore Alayne Stone, full and healthy with only a wolf’s dreams left of the Stark she was.

She finds he can talk about anything, often letting his secrets slip through while they walk around the gardens pointing here or there.  _More a songbird than a falcon_. She smiles sweet and fake as Alayne and gives him her arm, and he gives her a tour pointing out the spaces where he’s laid with some young girls in the summer.  _He craves love too_ , like most men, like a pup when it’s owner turned their head away for barely a moment.

The haze of Sansa Stark’s memory starts to grow on her every moment with Harry. Months pass, and Alayne finds that summer fruits don‘t taste so sickly sweet. Together, they build another castle in the growing snow, this one smaller than the one she built upon first coming to the Eyrie. Sweetrobin destroys them and Harry makes them new again. Like a cycle, over and over, while the ghost of Sansa Stark starts to press on Alayne’s heart. She lets him lay atop her and kiss her in the snow.

Later, when she looks down from her bedchamber, she can see their outline in the snow and the still green grass that their bodies uncovered.

 _It looks wrong_ , she thinks, and wonders if its because she was Alayne or Sansa.

 ***

 _He’s_  seen it all, she knows he has, and Alayne can’t be surprised when he’s standing in her room saying they need to talk about the boy and the movement of pawns and the benefits of marriage.

She tolerates bitterness far better than sweetness these days, but too much still can make her sick. She wants nothing more for this moment to end.

 “You expect me to control him? I cannot, I wouldn’t even know how.” Brushing past him is a necessity, she does not feel she can look her father in the eye when he’s like this. It’s easier to speak to him when she doesn’t have to look at him directly, and so she turns her back to him. “And if I cannot, how do you expect Sansa Stark to?” She doesn’t say how like summer he is, like a dream. Dreams are always difficult to control.

 “Dear Alayne, don’t you know? A wolf will always devour a falcon.”

Her face is a mask in the mirror, which she believes not even he can interpret. Only skepticism is allowed to seep from her voice, and not every tear and fear she feels like vomiting onto the floor when bitter talk of her marriage comes up.  _What,_  she asks herself,  _does Alayne Stone have to fear of marriage and men? She has spent her life among Septas, she has never been wed._  “A falcon can peck a wolf’s eyes out, can claw their faces and make them helpless if frightened enough to survive.”

He is Littlefinger, and when he smiles her stomach twists with fear for Littlefinger is not Petyr and his smiles are not gentle. They remind her of a knife, and they seem to press against her back as she tries to brush her hair. She feels if she moves her hand just a little lower, she can knock the point of his smile from her back.

“Then the wolf would simply have to disguise her muzzle as a friend. Then, when the falcon lands on her nose looking for company, she can bite off his legs, he will no longer stand without her.”

She stretches the brush further than her hair goes; it scratches the itch his smile leaves.

Summer would have felt so nice right now.

“Then, when he is off balance and confused, she can bite off his beak so he can no longer harm her at all. In his confusion, she can clip his wings with her teeth so he can no longer fly. Unable to move, unable to fly, unable to eat or speak, he’ll be helpless. She can then, without fear, swallow the rest of him whole.” When she feels his hand on her shoulder, it takes every ounce of will to not jump up. The knifepoint itch is gone, and what is left is his hand running the brush through her hair. “Do you understand, Alayne?”

“Yes, father.”

But it’s hard to balance Littlefinger’s bitter words when Harry’s sweet mouth is on hers.  _A wolf_ , she thinks,  _like a wolf_. But what is it a wolf would do, truly? And which part of her was the wolf?

***

They build snow castles again, Alayne working without looking at him. He’s like a puppy, starved for love when it’s master looks away for the moment, and he scoots closer to her peering down at her latest project with his soft smile.

“What’s this part?” he asks.

Sansa and Alayne mixed into her mind, both the same, both different, both hard to separate, but both wolves and her mouth starts to form the words ‘Godswood’ before she catches herself halfway through. She recognizes the mistake, remembers the game again, is angry at herself. Alayne Stone grew up surrounded by Septas, why would she care for a Godswood?

“A forest,” she says, and destroys the snow trees herself. He lets it go.

Or, no, he doesn’t. He starts to ask questions, but Sansa cuts him off with a kiss. There’s a test to be made, and with it she tastes blood.

Harry pulls away, hurt and puzzled, wiping the blood from his lips. Alayne’s smile has the look of a wolf, a drop of his blood smeared across her lips. It pulls him closer, he closes his eyes and feels her warmth, feels her teeth again, and it’s just like a dream.

When he wakes from the haze, he finds they’ve destroyed the forest she’d built up.

Alayne sits on top of him. Her smile is sharp and her eyes are soft and he can’t tell which parts of her are safe to touch and which will cut him again. (This, she thinks, seems more right. Feels more right. She didn’t even need Littlefinger to tell her how she was doing here, what she should do. It doesn’t matter what he wants, anyway.)

(She wonders, though, who it is here, Sansa’s ghost, the wolf? A leftover? Or Alayne Stone, posed as his friend?)

“He says I should swallow you whole,” she admits, and her voice is so quiet he can’t be sure he heard her.

He smiles back at her (Alayne or Sansa?). “Go on then,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted may 16, 2016


End file.
